The exaggerated demise of the electric car

A few years ago I spent a day driving in central London in a Ford Think, which was Uncle Henry’s attempt to create an all-electric car for the urban market.
It was one of the most horrible experiences of my motoring life. For all the millions that Ford had ploughed into the creation of the two-seat Think City, it felt horribly out of its depth when asked to deal with the capital’s traffic. The unassisted steering was heavy, rear visibility was terrible and the chassis crashed its way through every pothole as a couple of hundred kilos of batteries made their presence felt.

A few years ago I spent a day driving in central London in a Ford Think, which was Uncle Henry’s attempt to create an all-electric car for the urban market.

It was one of the most horrible experiences of my motoring life. For all the millions that Ford had ploughed into the creation of the two-seat Think City, it felt horribly out of its depth when asked to deal with the capital’s traffic. The unassisted steering was heavy, rear visibility was terrible and the chassis crashed its way through every pothole as a couple of hundred kilos of batteries made their presence felt.

The worst bit was the fact that, after making less than 10 miles of very slow progress across London, the battery gauge reported that it had less than half charge remaining, meaning that getting back required the use of an AA transporter.

Ford’s accountants subsequently worked out that the project wouldn’t be economically viable even if the Think wore a £15,000 price tag and – to nobody’s surprise – the whole project was wound down a few months later.

The contrast with the day I recently spent in the equally electric Mitsubishi i-MiEV filming our video couldn’t be greater. Only seven years separates the Mitsubishi from the Think, but in evolutionary terms it’s a higher primate to the Think’s single-cell organism. In the urban environment it’s designed for, the i-MIEV is completely painless. It’s rapid, easy to drive and equipped with power steering, air-con and a decent sound system. Apart from the pleasing whine of the traction motor, it might as well be any other city car.

But other than a thirst for 240V AC, I can only think of two things that the i-MIEV shares with the Think, although sadly both are significant problems.

The first is the range anxiety that quickly comes over the pilot of any electric vehicle – with the possible exception of the Tesla Roadster. It takes seven hours to recharge the battery pack from a domestic socket, meaning that the i-MIEV’s battery meter is by far the most important of its instruments. Miscalculate any journey’s duration and that’s a long wait by the side of the road – especially as you won’t even have juice to run the hazard lights.

The second similarity is price. The i-MIEV is an almost infinitely superior car to the Think, but it’s still going to struggle to make a case for itself costing anything up to 100 per cent more than a petrol-powered equivalent. Mitsubishi still hasn’t decided whether the production i-MIEV will be coming to the UK, but realistically it’s going to require a fat government subsidy to make it a viable proposition.

Join the debate

Q: What's the point of the electric car when it's powered by a coal-fired powerstation?

A: This is a problem that is being addressed. We cannot move forward with EVs if we do not move forward our electricity infrastructure and generation. Ecotricity is one of a number of companies ensuring that we have clean energy for clean vehicles.

Q: Has battery weight, size and life improved at the same rate? ...no sat nav then on EVs.

A: Battery weight has definitely decreased with size and life has improved in current lithium batteries. Look at mobile phones. I know they have got bigger with new 'additions', but they'll still a lot smaller than 10 years ago. We need to look at vehicle design as well. Vehicles like the Aptera 2e redefine what we see as a 'car' and could well show the future...

Q: What's more difficult/costly to develop - a hydrogen infrastructure with a few thousand garages around the country (sorry, haven't researched exact numbers), or a secure electric recharge point outside every house in Britain?

A: Absolutely no question for me here. Electric charging infrastructure. A recharging post is set to go below £1,000 in price and there are 25 million homes in the UK - so that's £25 billion. There are over 9,000 'petrol stations' in the UK. Hydrogen infrastructure in each would mean an average installation cost of £2.8 million. I reckon it would cost a lot more than that. The safe storage of hydrogen is a nightmare. The tank in the back of the IC-engine version of the Hydrogen 7 from BMW has 75 alternate layers of aluminium foil and fibreglass.

Also, generating liquid hydrogen is a MASSIVELY costly process - both in terms of energy and monetary cost. We know how to produce electricity relatively cheaply/cleanly.

Q: Which has a greater impact on our visual landscape?

A: Tough one. I think both camps would argue their technology looks better.

Q: Where do all the dead batteries go?

A: Most manufacturers can completely recycle their products, including the lithium that the cells contain - so unlike fossil fuels that are combusted and cannot be replaced, lithium cells are essentially renewable energy storage.

Q: Surely hydrogen is the way forward?

A: Yes, but it is not the ONLY way forward. There will be a mixture of variously fuelled vehicles required to push forward with a low carbon transport network. EV applications cannot suit all transport forms, neither can hydrogen.

Isn't one of the main problems with hyrodgen fuelled cars the running gear? A lot of precious metals make up with power unit, which make the cars expensive to build.

to be fair, all of these options will make up how we drive in the next few years. Electric, hybrids, bio-fuels, petrol, diesel and hydrogen will all play a part. I'm excited about the future of motoring, new ways of powering cars are great! All have up and downsides, so only time will tell if one becomes more favourable/sustainable than others.

As for public transport, its only good if its going the same way you are. I live 10 mins from work, but if i was to get the bus, it would take me an hour...

What's the point of the electric car when it's powered by a coal-fired powerstation?

Sirwilliam (above) mention's the advances of technology over time, and it's true, yes, that CPUs have doubled in speed every couple of years since the 70s or 80s - but has battery weight, size and life improved at the same rate? I get a couple of hours out of my Laptop, and all that goes round is.. er.. the hard-drive? Ah yes the screen that drains the power - no sat nav then on EVs.

What's more difficult/costly to develop - a hydrogen infrastructure with a few thousand garages around the country (sorry, haven't researched exact numbers), or a secure electric recharge point outside every house in Britain?

Which has a greater impact on our visual landscape?

Where do all the dead batteries go?

Public transport? Are you serious? Every time I travel to my clients in the north, I think to myself; "3 changes at Twyford, Reading, and Birmingham + 4 taxis vs door-to-door via 3 motorways at half the cost (including fixed costs).

Home-working? Yep on occasion (like today!) it's OK, but not every day, I get lonely and have to read this website!!!

Yes there are challenges around development of the hydrogen infrastructure, but it's the same argument as for the development of batteries - financial investment and time will tell.

Surely hydrogen is the way forward?

With the possible exception of the news from the USA of batteries that recharge in just seconds - didn't understand whether a) they also discharge in seconds and b) whether the shorter charge times equals less power consumption too, which would be good (good for hybrid vehicles too).

We as individuals have long been used to the luxury of modern personalised transportation. We have taken for granted various factors like, Distance covered, Power available, Reliability, Costs etc..etc...

The problem with Electric cars is they ask us to take a step back with all these parameters. First of all they are expensive, you require far more time charging them than you actually drive them, power is limited and one can go on. Still they are supposed to be Enviro friendly, even though things like how the batteries will be recycled and the power source for recharging them are still question marks.

All of a sudden cars have become a dirty subject and politicians have jumped onto the bandwagon. How come none of them take on the printed media for all the excessive supplements, junk, leaflets, ads that come along with the weekend papers. Yes they are recycled but it still takes a huge amount of energy to turn them into paper, distribute them, gather them back, recycle them again, turn it into paper....

How come there are no rules for limiting pages to just important stuff. No one will have the balls to take on the media while car cos. are easy targets.

In the last five years people have forgotten all the great things that owning a car meant and have decided to join green junkies who think they know best.

Incidentally, there was a seminar tonight entitled 'The Electric Vehicle Journey: From Niche to Mainstream' organised jointly by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LCVP) and the Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRASEG).

Electric vehicles will form a major part of the UK and wider global car parc in the next 20 years.

The business model for pure hydrogen vehicles just doesn't stack up. The cost of extracting it and producing it in liquid form, the cost of storage solutions, the cost of infrastructure etc... Very long term, yes, I submit we may see hydrogen fuel cells coupled to energy storage solutions to make a PHEV or HEV that will lack a gasoline or diesel internal combustion engine. However, I can't see hydrogen coming in in any serious way within the next 20 years.

"Try and make any of them cost-effective in an ordinary run of the mill family car."

Predictions are that once annual production of battery-powered (including HEV and PHEV) vehicles reaches 3,000,000, the price of lithium-ion batteries will have dropped to $200 per kWh. That's probably about a quarter of what it is now and analysts predict that'll happen by about 2014.

To the contrary. Battery technology has come a long way in the last few decades. Compare today's lithium-ion cells (be that LiPo, LiFePO4 or whatever) to what we had 10 or 20 years ago and the difference in terms of energy density and lifetime is huge.

You only have to look at the sizes and ratings of mobile phone batteries compared to 5 or 10 years ago to see this. I have an old Ericsson A1018 somewhere, with 'extra capacity' battery - it's a genuine brick.

Hydrogen fuel cells are all well and good, but batteries offer far superior cycle efficiency. If energy becomes less plentiful and more costly, this is a real disadvantage, regardless of energy/power density advantages.

Try and make any of them cost-effective in an ordinary run of the mill family car.

It would cost many times that of a fuel cell car- the only thing stopping fuel cell cars from taking over immediately is the unfortunate fact that we have no hydrogen filling infrastructure yet.

I don't want electric cars full stop. Will never buy one. Cannot see the point with the exception of city centres. If they make a reliable one at sme point, then local town councils should by some and lease them out by thehour, like the dutch or danes do with bicycles...

There is no reason or pleasure to be had from owning one.

If the UK bans petrol cars in the future (big if), then I ll break the law or I ll move elsewhere.